


the hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat (but i am just a careless tourist here)

by orphan_account



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: (by Byakuran Gesso, Bulimia, Bullying, Crying, Depression, Gen, I am in no way romanticizing how Tsuna feels, Insanity, Kinda, Peer Abuse, Pre-Canon, Sawada Iemitsu Being an Asshole, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Verbal Abuse, and part of chapter two but part of chap 2 would be past the beginning of KHR, at all, at least try to help yourself, by his classmates, featuring crushed flowers), fjfjfjfkk sorry if I missed any tags, i stand firm in disliking canon nana, if I did please tell me, if you can’t bring yourself to ask for it, if you ever ever EVER feel like this, it ends up sliding into apathy, it never is, like she calls her son useless what the fuck, not too vivid though, oh yeah also, please, selective mutism, sleeping medication, suicide is not the answer, tell someone, via never being there at all, welll that’s for chapter one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Staring down at his hand full of pills, he wondered when it had all gotten so fucked up.When he had started getting so bad.When he had started becoming so useless and started punishing himself for it.The glow of the moonlight illuminated the pills. Little, innocuous white pills.They tasted chalky, he knew.He wondered if he would end up throwing them up in the end, too?
Comments: 18
Kudos: 132





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As said in the tags, I am IN NO WAY ENDORSING OR ROMANTICIZING TSUNA’S ACTIONS HERE.
> 
> If you ever feel anything like Tsuna does, tell someone. Please, I absolutely beg of you. 
> 
> that out of the way— please do not flame me.
> 
> please. this is just self indulgent, more of a vent than anything.
> 
> I do not self-harm or anything like that at all, I just drown in anxiety sometimes and lose my voice. I can’t walk, my feet fell too heavy and I just—
> 
> it started out as me just writing down my thoughts at the very very beginning— like, the first twelve paragraphs— well, not quite paragraphs but whenever I press enter (from a different gender perspective) and turned into this. I skimmed this like, twice after writing so, uh, not gonna be top-notch. Just don’t criticize me please, constructive or not, or ramps up my anxiety into overdrive and makes me feel like shit.
> 
> Anyways, don’t read this is you think it will trigger you, safety first. And don’t read if you don’t like it. 
> 
> I... hope you enjoy whatever... this is.

Sometimes he felt like he couldn’t lift his feet.

Too heavy.

He didn’t have the willpower to lift his feet.

He didn’t have the willpower to speak sometimes— he  _wanted_ to, just, he... he knew no one would care to listen.

So he kept his mouth shut even though he wanted to speak _so bad_ .

And... and he just.. he didn’t know what to do.

He just stood there in silence as everyone chattered away.

He sometimes wanted to cry.

Just— just a little bit. He’d shut his eyes real tight and wish for them to go away, tried to will them away or else he’d be labeled a crybaby, more of one than he already was—

A few slipped out sometimes, anyways.

Crying in the bathroom was a thing.

He’d let loose big, heaving sobs.

Sometimes he’d puke into the convenient toilet beside him.

Sometimes he made himself puke. He felt too fat.

Too ugly.

Too— too weird, too wimpy, too—

He wondered when he had gotten so fucked up.

It was his usual thought whenever he stared at the bloody razor glinting in the light of the moon.

The smell of blood pricked his nose.

He puked again.

A lot of the time, he wasn’t okay.

He accepted that.

It was  _ fine _ .

All he had to do was live until, until...

He didn’t know how long he had to live, actually.

He took pills to even be able to think of sleeping.

Maybe if he took more than the prescribed dose it would—

He stopped. Shook his head.

His mom would cry.

He was pretty sure.

Right?

Even though his mom called him useless. But that was just because it was the truth, although, sometimes Tsuna just wished she wouldn’t.

But she would ( _probably_ ) cry, and...

And no one else would care.

He wasn’t even sure if his mom would care. He wasn’t sure if she would even cry, and well—

Staring down at his hand full of pills, he wondered when it had all gotten so fucked up. 

When he had started getting so bad.

When he had started becoming so useless and started punishing himself for it.

The glow of the moonlight illuminated the pills. Little, innocuous white pills.

They tasted chalky, he knew.

He wondered if he would end up throwing them up in the end, too?

He threw up a lot of stuff.

His gaze wandered to his wrist.

It looked dangerously thin.

He was still too fat.

He still couldn’t quite talk, sometimes. His throat’d close up and tears would prick his eyes and he’d just—

Stop.

He stared at the scars on his wrist. On his arm. Both of his arms and wrists. Silvery yet pink. Or, he guessed you could call it red. Too goddamn red.

He hated red.

When he looked back at his hand full of pills, it was all just powder.

He slowly blinked.

People he didn’t know were beating him up again, he absently noticed, in the way people notice on the edge of their minds that one blade of grass was yellow instead of a dull green.

They were yelling about how he was a stain on the earth, how he should just go die.

He was well aware of that.

The skylark ended up showing up and beating them into the ground. He walked away as they were all distracted.

He wondered why everything seemed so dull now. 

He stood at Namimori’s river and wondered when he had gotten there.

His shoes were off.

Huh.

He was sitting on the very edge of the river.

Dangling his bare feet over the rushing water.

Dangling his soul before the sharks and wondering if they would bite.

Wondering if he would die, now.

Wondering if he even wanted to die.

... he didn’t quite want anything, anymore.

He slept a lot.

It was the closest he could ever come to death without actually dying, and so as he sat on the edge—

He wondered if he wanted to take the jump.

He certainly didn’t want to live.

In the end, though—

What he wanted had never really mattered.

So when he heard sudden yells of “No, don’t jump!”, heard sudden footsteps, well-

He had always startled easily.

As he fell, and kept falling and falling and falling and the spray of the water licked his face,

he looked up for one last time.

He saw the horrified expression on the guy up on that bridge, with red hair and glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, and he didn’t quite smile.

He hadn’t smiled in years.

But it was close.

And when Sawada Tsunayoshi hit the water,

he felt peace.


	2. others.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more POVs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here’s what y’all asked for. apologies for taking so long, I kept forgetting it existed. just finished the last bit as I was procrastinating on writing my other stuff.
> 
> fair warning literally none of this is edited.

When Irie Shoichi woke up that day, he wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary, but—

Staring down,

And down,

And down,

At the water below him, clutching a pair of shoes worn thin from use—

... he took a shaky breath and tried not to puke, before he suddenly  _ screamed  _ as he realized what had just happened.

There was no chance of someone surviving that drop, those rocks, yet he couldn’t think that, he _couldn’t he_ _ couldn’t he couldn’t— _

He couldn’t stop screaming,

and he was scared,

and guilty,

and he couldn’t stop _s_ _ queezing the fucking shoes— _

And he had just watched someone die.

Right in front of him—

_ Because of him . _

A few minutes later (he didn’t know how long), he slowly stopped screaming.

He let out a watery laugh as he heard sirens.

As he blinked and when his eyes opened the demon of Namimori himself was in front of Shoichi, 

and then he blinked again and the police were there

and then he started screaming again when they tried to tug him away from the edge of the bridge.

Only later, inside of the police station with a shock blanket over him, did he numbing realize what he was screaming.

_ I killed him. _

When Sawada Nana first heard the news, she let out a little hum and shook her head as she went about making dinner.

“I’m sorry, Officer-san, but I believe you have the wrong house.”

After all, her son wouldn’t do that— of course not. He was dame, not depressed.

Not suicidal.

( _She cheerily blocked out the memories of staring at a handful of pills herself, and wondering if she would stop missing_ _ him so damn bad if she took them. If the shame of having such a useless son would stop. _

_ If the shame of being such a terrible wife that her husband would leave her for years on end, would stop. If the whispers and stares because of that and her son would stop. _

_ If it all, would just stop, everything would be worth it— _

Everything .)

When the officer winced, and asked if he could come inside, she smiled wide and told him of course. She loved guests.

But then the officer got serious, and...

She sat down across from him.

When he said what had happened,  _ again _ , Nana’s smile became strained.

She told him he had the wrong house, again.

When he insisted that her son was dead—

She ended up kicking him out of her house with zero remorse.

Politely, of course.

And so, she waited for her Tsu-kun to come home.

Texted him about curfew.

He didn’t respond.

She called him—

And when someone picked up, she gave a small sigh of relief.

She didn’t think she could handle someone else leaving her.

And when another officer answered, and told her that her son was dead and—

She screamed at the woman and barricaded herself in her room for the night.

Woke up early in the morning. The house was still empty, but for her.

It wasn’t funny anymore.

~~_ (When had it ever been?) _ ~~

And when the officer came back, and he told her, once more—

She screamed.

She screamed, and cried, and ran out of the house.

She searched the town for her Tsu-kun, her precious, most definitely  _ alive  _ Tsu-kun, because he was out there, and probably lonely, and scared—

And when night came and she ended up back in her empty home, save her and the officer—

Something inside of her  _ broke _ .

and she screamed.

and she cried.

but no one could bring her precious baby back.

and when she called her husband,

to tell him his useless wife couldn’t even stop their beautiful boy from killing himself,

and nobody answered, despite her tears and screams and anger and weeks she spent trying to call him,

Sawada Nana realized that perhaps her poor baby had been doomed from the start,

with their set of genes. 

When Reborn came to Namimori, he expected nothing but a more civilian Dino Cavallone.

Nothing but a foolish version of Sawada Iemitsu.

Nothing but a failure he’d have to turn into a success.

**N** ~~ _o_~~ **T** _ **H** i ~~n~~_ ** ~~G~~** _b_ ~~U~~ ** ~~t~~** **a** ~~m~~ _ **i**_ ~~S _s_~~ **i _ ~~O~~_** _n_.

And so, like he did on any mission, he observed.

He observed Sawada Nana’s tears and anger and screams coming from the house at night.

He observed how Sawada Tsunayoshi never seemed to leave the house.

He brushed it off.

He dropped off the flyer.

He waited.

Sawada Nana never answered.

He took a different approach, going to the house and introducing himself as the writer of the flyer.

Sawada Iemitsu’s...

_Colleague_.

He got screams of anger.

He got a woman collapsing pitifully on the floor, pulling at her hair.

He got the door slammed in his face.

And most of all, he got the thought of, 

_ oh. This isn’t what was in the report. _

And when Reborn wandered off to contemplate, ending up sitting on a grave in the graveyard as he morbidly thought that was probably where he belonged, contemplated where he had went wrong, he looked

_down_ ,

and he saw the name,

the flowers,

and little notes of sadness and farewell,

and realized, for once in his life since he was that little boy screaming at the world to look at him, look at what he had accomplished, he realized that maybe,

just _maybe_ ,

he might’ve been wrong.

he stared and he looked and tears pricked his eyes and he finally cried for the first time in a long time, not because he felt any particular connection, but because he was just,

_just_ ,

.... tired.

  
  


Yamamoto Takeshi didn’t know how to feel when ‘Dame-Tsuna’ died.

Commit...  _suicide_.

_ Killed himself. _

Takeshi’d been thinking about doing it himself, for a while now.

He sat on the school rooftop, concrete digging into his fingers,

a smile on his face.

Takeshi wasn’t quite sure if he could stop, at that point.

Smiling, that is.

But regardless, he sat on the cold, hard rooftop, and contemplated.

Thought about it.

Realizing how  _ fucking easy _ it would be, to just inch the tiniest bit further.

Just the tiniest bit, and he’d fall, and he’d die.

he had assumed it would’ve been more breathtaking.

he had assumed wrong.

but he tried to ignore that. 

he tried to remember what Sawada had been like. he tried to grant him the dignity of being without that horrible nickname in death, if not life.

Takeshi wondered if they would’ve been friends, in another life.

he somehow doubted it.

Takeshi doubted he would’ve ever survived long enough.

he doubted he would’ve ever been good enough, to deserve a friend.

... friend.

What a foreign word.

foreign concept.

his thoughts wandered to Sawada Nana.

he remembered her face. wasn’t hard to, considering the amount of wandering around town she did. coming and going, like a ghost.

but she always returned to her son’s

her son’s

her son’s

.... grave.

Takeshi’s chin wrinkled and his lips pulled downwards, his eyes squeezing shut as he suddenly yanked himself away from the edge.

he couldn’t stop shivering.

he couldn’t stop fucking  _ sobbing _ .

Big, heaving, ugly-ass sobs.

He couldn’t stop crying, and whimpering, and shaking. He rocked back and forth, hugging his legs to his chest, and crying, and

and

and

.... he just wanted to go  _ home  _ to friends who were actually friends and cared about him and a happy dad and an alive mom and a life not so entirely obsessed with baseball that a good half of his drafts of suicide notes he’d created over the years involved baseball  _Gods_.

He couldn’t fucking dream of describing the pure need, desperation of that want, the hopelessness of it.

Because he could never ever fucking achieve it because the only reason people liked him and he wasn’t failing school was  _baseball_ , and his mom was fucking  _gone_.

_Dead_.

Whatever words you use for it, doesn’t change the damn fact, and so—

He shook just a little bit harder and wanted his  _dad_.

He just... he squeezed his eyes tight, tears slipping down his face and dripping into his lap.

He just

he just wanted his  _dad_.

Twenty seven weeks after the death of one Sawada Tsunayoshi,

Byakuran boarded a plane to Japan.

Humming, humming, humming, he tapped and tapped,

tapped,

tapped,

_ tapped _ ,

the seat’s armrest.

His fingers itched,

and when they landed the plane,

he smiled and smiled and smiled at the milling crowd,

and did all he could not to scream, because it  _wasn’t fair_.

It,

wasn’t,

fair!

He—

Tsunayoshi-kun—

He was supposed to die at the hands of  Byakuran!

Not— not  himself!

What— what  right did Tsunayoshi-kin have to— to  rob Byakuran of—

Of his chance—

his chance to—

to—

finally—

prove—

... himself.

He had found his way to the graveyard.

Crunch,

crunch,

crunch,

went his shoes on the gravel.

Slowly, he popped a marshmallow out of his pocket into his mouth.

And wandered over to the grave,

covered in flowers and little notes.

Scoffing, he crushed one under his heel. He had seen the parallel worlds (where they got to keep their Tsunayoshi-kun his rival his enemy the  pinpoint of his existence— ), and most of them would’ve been fake.

He had seen parallel worlds and the sneers and the laughter and cruel words and hurtful pushes and shoves, he had seen it.

and he knew this world was no different.

He knew the diverging point in this,

was where,

Tsunayoshi-kun

never

ever

shrugged it off.

And now, he was dead.

Now Byakuran was stuck alone.

A world without his rival, a world where the closest thing he might get to one was a fucking toddler—

He screamed, and threw the small handful of flowers he had at the gravestone, shaking.

Slowly,

slowly,

slowly he lowered himself to the ground, and stared at the flowers.

White orchids.

He stared at them, and stared, and stared. 

Stared,

stared,

and stared.

He stared, and just  wished ,

with all his being,

that they were orange,

and we’re all together twenty seven.

He stared, and wished.

Wished they were just the person he would never,

ever,

get to meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> toddler Byakuran refers to is Yuni.
> 
> never actually watched/read KHR, so sorry if I got Byakuran’s characterization wrong. or if there’s a disconnect between any of the POVs, I ended up writing each one at different times.

**Author's Note:**

> he died when he was thirteen, a few months before reborn came.


End file.
